Forced to fly coach?

The meltdown of global financial markets slashed the ranks of the world's billionaires by 30 percent in 2008, Forbes magazine reports in its annual tally. • "The world has become a wealth wasteland," Forbes declares in the billionaire report on its Web site. "Like the rest of us, the richest people in the world have endured a financial disaster over the past year." • The number of billionaires fell to 793 from 1,125 a year ago, Forbes said. Their collective net worth: $2.4 trillion, a drop of $2 trillion.

American households' net worth fell 9 percent in 2008's fourth quarter, the largest drop in more than a half-century of record keeping. Family net worth — total assets such as homes and checking accounts minus liabilities like mortgages and credit card debt — now stands at $51.48 trillion.